This is one of the jankiest games I've played in a long time. I use that word particularly because its not like the game is broken or busted, but there is just so much glitchy junk going on.
- Sure, the game looks great while standing still but nearly every cinematic moment is ruined by clipping and other nonsense (hands not holding items, items disappearing, things popping in randomly, voiceover not synced).
- I haven't seen facial animations this bad since Andromeda. Weird, goofy eye focus, spastic head movement, texture pop-in, etc.
- The animations overall are terrible, weirdly accelerating between feeling too slow and too fast. Getting jammed under items is common.
- The combat is floaty as fuck, sliding all over the place, with seemingly random hits coming out of nowhere and distance being almost impossible to gauge, teleports to target common, etc.
- Some of the graphics are lol bad. The first time I saw a whale leap out of the ocean and float in the sky before disappearing back beneath the waves I laughed my ass off. Didn't they already solve for this in Black Flag?
- Environmental glitches - clouds becoming totally black at times, water moving above hard surfaces, smoke turning blue, etc.
I could go on and on. I doubt any of this is platform-performance related since I've been playing on both One X and Series X and the issues happened for both. Its weird to see all this janky junk coming from Genshin Impact where all of the animations, climbing, combat, cinematics, etc. are really well done (and "free" in a sense).
Of course it is still worth playing. Vikings are fucking cool and I look forward to slaughtering more English. But, godamn, what a janky piece of shit game this is.
